(Writing) Ye Olde List of Projects

20Jun

The biggest takeaway from my week of Infomagical is the seriously wonderful idea of narrowing my focus to one or two things and working on them until they’re done. I have a bad habit of saying yes to everything, of getting excited about so many projects and/or collaborations that it becomes really difficult to keep track of everything — let alone actually make time for things.

As part of the process of setting my priority, I thought I’d make a quick note of the projects I’m currently actively working on and where they sit on my to-do list. Of course, I’d appreciate any feedback you have to offer on this list. Do one of these projects excite you more than the others? Think I should be working on x instead of y? Let me know.

This is geared towards making sure I actually finish and submit most of these things somewhere — either to professional print/online publications; here at The Writing Desk; or for free public viewing at Furry Network or SoFurry.

The Cult of Maximus
This is the big one: the first project for the Jackalope Serial Company has been a bumpy one so far, and I’ve only managed to post thirteen parts in the first 24 weeks of the year. Making sure I make good on my promise to post weekly installments of this story until it’s done is my top priority. That means putting more work into plotting out the story, making sure I have a good handle on the settings and really solidifying how the supernatural elements of the world work. More than that, I really want to double back and edit previous chapters to “smarten” them up for posting elsewhere.

By the way, this doubles as a reminder that I have a Patreon for erotic serial stories. They feature M/M content, muscle growth, giants and some violent content. If you’re interested, go here to sign up!

The Writing Desk
I definitely want to make sure that this blog is updated at least three times a week, and I’ve been managing a good pace with that so far. Really, it’s just a matter of making sure I have ideas for articles ready to go when there isn’t anything more pressing to talk about, and doing my best to keep up with Friday Fiction. That’s the feature I’m most excited about here, even if it ends up being my least-read post most weeks. Hopefully, as I get better at flash fiction, that will change.

Short Stories
I would really love to write and submit short stories to all kinds of publications — there is a booming market for POC voices in science-fiction and fantasy, and I think that I have a unique perspective and voice to contribute to that conversation. Right now, I think writing stories to their completion, workshopping and editing them, then putting up polished work online is my best play — but there are still places I would love to submit to. For the time being, working through commissions and requests is the priority here. “A Stable Love” is draft-complete, but needs an edit; and the poor fellow who won my short story prize during last year’s Write-A-Thon is *still* waiting for even a draft. It’s time to get my shit together here.

New Fables
Admittedly, I feel a little guilty about this being so low on the list. If you haven’t heard of New Fables, it’s a wonderful annual publication that features anthropomorphic characters helping us understand the human condition a little bit better. The last issue was published in 2012, and the process of putting up the next one has been filled with stops and starts. It is *well* past time I get on the stick about doing the necessaries to get this next issue published. After that, the plan for the future of the title needs to be solidified.

Pathfinder
I ran a Pathfinder game for several friends some time ago; due to the fact that I had much less idea what I was doing with the system than I thought I did and the fact that I needed to actually plot ahead a lot more than I did, it’s been on hiatus for a little while. However, we’re getting the band back together on July 30th; that means I have a ticking clock to revamp characters and plot out the next phase of the story. There’s certainly work to do, and it can’t be underestimated.

There are, of course, a lot of other projects, but these are the five that I will be working on now. I consider my plate full, and just about everything else will have to wait until I’m done with these.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, folks — here’s to hoping that the focus remains tight until I’ve got a handle on these projects…